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SOMEONE IS WATCHING

Edwar Michael O’Durr Supronowicz

    Someone is watching. Someone is watching. Maybe so. Maybe not. Maybe it just seems that way because we are human, so we need to invent a watcher, a peeping tom who vouchsafes our naked stupidity, a little dignity and grace.
    Oh - I do not mean God. Sure He watches, but is probably bored with all the reruns and spinoffs. Adam and Eve were pretty original. Cain and Abel somewhat so. But by the time He got to the Flood, you might say He was pulling the plug, cancelling most of the eon’s lineup of variety shows.
    Or maybe we are watching ourselves. That would be self-conscious at a minimum, narcissistic at a maximum. Or plain schizoid. After all, unless aliens are creeping in at midnight to expand the gene pool, the human race gets more inbred every generation, so more and more bonkers.
    But let us be polite, or at least prudent. After all, someone is watching.

1.
THE NAME

Seaside, as a name, seems quite a misnomer to the uninitiated. After all, the area is quite barren. A bit frumpy and disheveled in Mother Nature terms.
    Let’s just tell it like it is: it is a desert. Yes, a desert. The only way to drown is in your own sweat, provided you keep hydrated enough to sweat.
    A few geological eons ago it was actually an inland ocean. But this is just a murmuring echo of a memory even to the the fossilized skeletons that pop up now and then. There is very little fishing or swimming going on with the locals unless they have been out in the sun a little too long.
    By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea - as they say. (Whoever “they” are. But be polite. They could be listening.)

2.
THE MINE

Finn and Clark discovered the mine in 1860. They were prospecting for gold, but found copper instead. Both died drunk and disappointed.
    The next generation of Finns and Clarks were not adventurers. They were sober accountants. They figured this; they counted that. They did the math and decided to found the town of Seaside.
    They diddled and fiddled some more numbers, not quite crunching them, and decided that 500 people constituted the perfect population for the town. In fact, they made up a sign saying
    You Are Now Entering Seaside
    Population: 500
    300 people were needed to man the mines. 75-100 family members were considered essential for social stability. And the other 75-125 were to be shopkeepers, grocers, police, doctors and dentists.
    When an accident happened at the mine and killed 10 men, the accountants brought in 10 live ones. When too many babies were born, the accountants fired a few men, Since the mine was the main work in town, the unemployed soon left and rebalanced the population.

3.
MAIN STREET

Main Street was truly the main street, for it was the only street. It stretched for 4 miles across the barren waste. At the western end of it, was the gaping maw of the copper mine.
    It looked like the mine was going to swallow the town whole, but it never did, It just took a few nibbles here and there and now and then.
    Some people liked to say the town snaked across the desert, but they were being poetic.
    It was straight, straight as a ledger sheet.

4.
THE HIGHWAY

The road into town, like most roads, went east and west. Going east you could go all the way to the Atlantic. Going west you could go all the way to Seaside.
    In other words, Seaside was the end of the road literally. Sure, people could turn around and go back the way they came. However, most of the people who ended up in Seaside did not want to go back to where they came from. In fact, even when they died, Seasiders decided to go no further than the local cemetery.

5.
FATHER BILL

Father Bill was a defrocked priest. Everyone in town knew it, for Father Bill told everyone he talked to. Actually, no one in town knew what “defrocked” meant. However, there was almost universal agreement that the town did not need a lot of “frocking” going on.
    Father Bill was defrocked for making his personal doubt a little too obvious and tangible to his former parish. In the middle of the liturgy, Father Bill had alternated between shouting “there is no God” to murmuring that “if there is a God, He just doesn’t care”.
    The bishop benched Father Bill for the season (Lent season, then Advent season) hoping Father Bill would get back to the Gospel playbook. Unfortunately, that did not happen. Father Bill was given his walking papers.
    And as Father Bill was walking towards what he presumed was his eternal damnation, he saw this ad:

SPIRITUAL LEADER WANTED
    Some religious training would be nice.
    Must be a team player. Wears size 37
    suit and plays piccolo and flute.

Father Bill was a little rusty on the piccolo, but he applied anyway, And since Father Bill had already offended the Catholic Church and probably God, he did not want to tick anybody else off, at least not right then. So Bill planned his church carefully to make all feel welcome.
    At the front entrance were small crucifixes, miniature buddhas, and bright stars of David. There also were rabbits feet for agnostics and atheists. However, the atheists felt that the notion of luck was too akin to faith, so Father Bill left some crossword puzzle books.
    Father Bill worried what he would do for the Satanists. After all, he wanted to make everyone feel welcome. But it was a moot point or feckless worry, for there were no Satanists in town.

6.
THE GREAT-GRANDSONS

Like “Finn” rhymes with “gin” and “Clark” sounds like “clerk” the present generation of the founders inherited drunkenness and number mania. The combination approximated the adventurous spirit of the founders, but only in a sickly and perverse manner.
    While drunk, Finn (who favored microeconomics) counted every hair on his wife’s head. The drink made him lose count, so he started over and over again - both the drink and the count,
    It took a month to complete, after which his wife sued for divorce on the basis of numerous counts.
    Not to be outdone, Clark (who favored macroeconomics) cut off all his wife’s hair and weighed it. Clark’s wife was not upset, since she had always wanted to be a Buddhist monk.
    But after Clark’s wife found out that only men could be Buddhist monks, she donned a saffron robe and immolated herself. Her last words were “that will show them”. Exactly what? Who knows?
    It bears mentioning that though the great-grandsons counted just about everything they did they did not keep track of their sins or overdue library books.

7.
OLD NEWS

“Pitbull” Baker ran the Seaside Weekly and taught English and journalism at the local k-12. His nickname came from the aggressive way he would pursue a story, from the way that once he locked his jaws on something he would not let it go. In other words, he could be quite annoying.
    A minor detail from his past might give one pause about his ability to teach an ethics class: he was fired from an East Coast newspaper for fabricating sources and making stories up from whole cloth. But most people were impressed how he could rattle off the five w’s (who, what, where, when and why). Little did they realize his personal w’s were wine, whiskey, women, and Willie Wonka. The garbage men did though, for they saw the empty bottles, the crotchless panties, and the chocolate wrappers - the innumerable chocolate wrappers.

8.
THE WELL-TRAVELED ROAD

Every Tuesday and every Friday Joe drove a truck full of food and sundry items into seaside. There was no variation in the route taken and little variation in what was ordered and delivered. Seemed the same old same old, but Joe took it all in philosophical stride.
    See, in his spare time Joe had been reading all the philosophers. Greek, Roman, German, British, American - you name it. Of course, this one contradicted that one and two schools of thought couldn’t fit into the same breath any more than a nun would fit into a leather miniskirt in a biker bar.
    But Joe took it all in stride with all things being equal more or less relatively speaking with some qualifications. He figured if there have been so many questions about everything and so many answers about something or other that something had to make sense one of these days. In the meantime, he would stay philosophical and allow himself some contradictions and illusions and a piece of cherry pie at the next diner.
    As as Joe was fond of saying, “Life is a road with a double yellow line down the middle of it.”

9.
WHAT’S UP DOC?

How the grandson of Joseph Mengele ended up in Seaside takes a little explaining. First of all his legal name now was Manny Goldberg, which certainly does demand some explaining.
    Well, Manny, born as Joseph the Third, was dropped off at a Catholic orphanage by his mother. She wanted to give him a chance in life, a better one than he might have with the name “Mengele”. She left the following note pinned to his diaper.:

This is my son Manny Goldberg.
    Please take care of him and don’t
    forget to tell him he is Jewish.

Manny grew up Jewish, married Jewish, became a Jewish doctor at a Jewish hospital. He did research to improve the world and especially “his” race. Some of his viral research went a little awry and killed twenty-seven people, Jewish people that is.
    And at this very bad time, Manny’s mother decides to re-embrace her German roots and tracks Manny down. She smiles and congratulates him on his research. Manny wants to drown her or at least his sorrows.
    Good-bye cruel world, hello Seaside. A little privacy, a little private practice, a little viral research.

10.
QUITE CONTRARY

Mary was born in a Midwestern town where there were more cornstalks than people. Once she saw a tall thistle in a cornfield, thought about how out of place it was and imagined it was her. Mary tended to overidentify, so metaphor became reality. She began to bristle at everyone and looked for ways to get out of the cornfield.
    Mary tried religion, but her knees got tired from praying. And she did wonder what a thistle heaven really was like.
    Next, Mary tried lesbianism as a feminist political statement. But her short-haired lesbian lover caught Mary with the lover’s brother. The lover could forgive anything, anything except heterosexual behavior.
    Mary tried organic gardening and vegetarianism, but soon grew tired of both. She was reminded too much of cornfields. Besides, she did enjoy a nice well-burnt steak every now and then. Actually, pretty often.
    How to get away from cornfields? Try the desert. Try seaside. And Mary did.
    Between religion and lesbianism, she had tried education. Seaside could always use a nurse/social worker/barista. Star bright, star bright, Starbucks.

11.
THE REMAINDER

The rest of the town was the rest of the town. Of course, each had a separate body, separate thoughts, and separate lives. Of course, most were special to somebody else or wanted to be so.
    It is just that the rest of the town breathed their lives softly, spoke them in private whispers.
    This does not mean they were living lives of quiet desperation, just that they were living quiet lives, not disturbing the peace.
    Whose peace? I don’t know.

12.
A USUAL DAY

People worked in the mines, the stores, the schools, the hospitals. Some were born; some died. Most tried to find some shade, which was hard to do in a desert.
    The church bell would have rang, if the church had had a bell.

13.
AN UNUSUAL DAY

At dusk, it began to snow.
    People stood at their windows, frozen as the windows began to freeze.
    No one moved for hours. Then they slept a deep and troubled dreamless sleep.
    At dawn, the smell of coffee wafted throughout the town. And the snow had disappeared.

14.
A QUIET DAY

No one wanted to be the first to speak about the snow, but wanted to speak of nothing else, so it was a laconic day full of the fewest and simplest phrases possible.
    At dusk, it began to snow.
    By dawn, it was gone.

15.
THEORIES

A government conspiracy and/or experiment?
    Aliens?
    End of Days?
    A mirage (the desert, remember)?
    Mass hysteria?
    Global warming?
    At dusk, the snow began. And while the elders traded theories, six children snuck outside and made snow angels. They then snuck back in and dripped melted snow on their floors.
    In the morning, the snow was gone and the floors were dry.

16.
SERMON IN THE DESERT

Father Bill’s sermons became more lively. He still doubted God’s existence, but began to believe in miracles. While many would argue that miracles presuppose a Primer Mover, i.e., God. Father Bill begged the question by saying miracles were created by a “miracle”.
    But to cover all the bases, Father Bill added some miniature Thor’s hammers and some Wiccan symbols to his cache of crucifixes, Stars of David, and rabbit feet he kept at the church’s entrance.
    Old church songs declared there was “power in the blood”. Father Bill felt there must be power in the snow. And he was going to receive it.
    Bill stuffed the pockets of his vestments with every symbol he had and waited for dusk.
    If there was power in the snow, he would let himself be covered in snow and receive its power like a holy anointment.

17.
MICRO/MACRO

Finn and Clark’s eyes glistened with diamond crocodile tears. In unison, both shouted that “there is gold in that there snow”. Finn estimated how many flakes would fit into a refrigerated 2' x 2' box. Clark estimated what the total weight would be.
    Together, Finn and Clark counted the minutes until dusk.

18.
BREAKING NEWS

Pitbull Baker screamed “Pulitzer, Pulitzer” under his breath. He called the New York Times, but the editor soon hung up on him since the story about the snow was quite unbelievable, especially given Baker’s penchant for making things up.
    But Baker was sinking his teeth deeper and deeper into the shin of hope. He was determined to interview a snowflake. No one in history had ever done that. Yes, he would be the first.
    Baker rabidly waited for dusk.

19.
HEGEL AND A BAGEL

Joe closed the text in front of him and bit into his bagel.
    Hegel was right: thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. No paradox. No dichotomy. Truth as end product, as its true self.
    So Joe planned it out. The thesis was the road he was always on; the antithesis was where the road disappeared into the blizzard.
    The synthesis? That is what he would find as he drove his truck into the blinding snow.
    Joe waited for dusk.

20.
REMEDY

Manny/Joseph stuffed his pockets with syringes. He planned to fill them with snow and to find a miracle cure. He would save the world and would redeem himself.
    He took an aspirin and waited for dusk.

21.
WHITE KNIGHT

Mary thought and thought. What she thought was that no one or anything could be a thistle or thistle-like in the snow.
    Like the lady she always knew she was, she would give a snow knight her scarf to wear in its battles whatever they may be. So she waited for night.

22.
SNOW DAY

Did we forget to mention? Today is an official “snow day”. Kids were getting upset that there was lots of snow, but no school closings.

23.
SHOW TIME

The snow began to fall. It was thicker and more white than “usual”, if such is possible.
    Joe started his truck and accelerated in the direction of the mine.
    Pitbull held his tape recorder as he walked in the direction of the mine.
    Reverend William wore his best vestments and made vague pontifical gestures as he walked towards the mine.
    Finn and Clark carried their refrigerated box like it were a strongbox for snowflakes.
    Manny/Joseph stabbed the air with his syringes.
    Mary wore red high heels. Not sensible shoes, but very pretty.
    They stood at the edge of town, in front of the gaping maw of the mine. The whiteness seemed to make time stop. Everything began to swirl faster and faster.
    Suddenly the swirling stopped. Joe, Pitbull, Reverend William, Manny/Joseph, Finn and Clark, and Mary were nowhere to be seen. All one could see was snow and more snow.

24.
AFTERMATH

The town grieved. Or at least grieved as well as it could. No one knew exactly what to do.
    However, mothers instructed their children not to pee in the snow or to swallow snowflakes.
    But it didn’t snow again. At least not up to now. But let us keep an open mind about the future.
    All we really know is the snow is white and maybe that Christmas might really be in July.
    Oh, yes. The great-great grandsons of Finn and Clark placed an ad for seven more future Seasiders.

25.
THE END

“The end” just seems so final. But it is only a story. And stories end. Or do they?
    Not if you are watching. Not if you are listening to the silence around us.

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